A court case that really was full of sh-t; retiring animals --- and time to do the same for pols

By
Chuck Shepherd

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The question in a vandalism case before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in July was whether Ronald Strong's messy bowel movement in a federal courthouse men's room in Portland, Maine, was "willful" or, as Strong claimed, an uncontrollable intestinal event.

Three rather genteel judges strained to infer Strong's state of mind from the condition of the facility.

A cleaning lady had described scattered feces as "smeared," but Judge Juan Torruella took that to mean not "finger smears," he wrote, but "chunks," "kind of like chunky peanut butter."

Two other judges, outvoting Torruella, seemed skeptical that feces could have landed two feet up the wall unless Strong had intended it.

(Even so, Judge Torruella was unimpressed, implying that if he were intending to smear feces in a men's room, he surely would sully the mirrors, but that all mirrors were found clean.) [Salon.com, 7-26-2013]

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The Costa Rican government announced recently that it would close all its zoos, effective March 2014, and free animals either to the wild or to safe "retirement" shelters.

Since the country is known for its expansive biodiversity (500,000 unique organisms, despite occupying barely more than 1/100th of 1 percent of Earth's area), it is time, the environment minister said, to allow the organisms to interact instead of imprisoning them.

Costa Rica is also one of only four countries to ban the exploitation of dolphins. [Global Post (Boston), 7-22-2013]